Forum Outposts

The Geometry Forum Newsletter

Winter 1995, page 2

New from the Forum: The Swat Team takes to the Internet
-- Ask Dr. Math!

Since the beginning of November, K12 students have had online help, thanks to a project initiated by the Geometry Forum. We posted an announcement out on the Internet. . .

***********************************************
 *                 Ask Dr. Math              *  
 *             Have a math question?         *       
 *      No problem you're working on is      *            
 *           too big or too small.           *   
 *  Want to talk to someone who loves math?  * 
 *         Let's do some math together!      * 
 *                 Visit:                    * 
 *    http://mathforum.org/dr.math/ask/      *
************************************************
If you are a student in elementary, middle, or 
high  school, write to us!  We can't wait to 
help you with your tough, interesting problems.  
Ask Dr. Math letters are answered by members 
of "The Swat Team," math students and professors 
here at Swarthmore College.  Ask Dr. Math is a 
project of the GEOMETRY FORUM, an NSF-funded 
program housed at Swarthmore College in 
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA.

Dear Dr. Math: I am in need of a detailed answer to the following question: Why can't you divide a number by 0? Thanks for your time, Terry Strohecker

Hi Terry,

We here at Math Headquarters have been thinking about your question, and think we've come up with something about why you can't divide by zero. There are sort of two reasons. For one thing, when you divide one number by another, you expect the result to be another number. Look at the sequence of numbers 1/(1/2), 1/(1/3), 1/(1/4), ..., and notice that the denominators are going to zero. If there's a limit to this sequence, we'd take that number and call it 1/0; let's see if there is a limit.

The sequence turns out to be 2, 3, 4, ..., and that goes to infinity. Since infinity isn't a real number, we don't assign any value to 1/0 -- we just say it's indeterminate.

But let's say we did assign a value to 0. Let's say that infinity is a real number, and 1/0 is infinity.

(continued p. 3)

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